Phaethon

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

proper n. A taxonomic genus within the family Phaethontidae — tropicbirds.

proper n. Alternative form of Phaëthon.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The son of Helios (Phœbus), that is, the son of light, or of the sun. He is fabled to have obtained permission to drive the chariot of the sun, in doing which his want of skill would have set the world on fire, had he not been struck with a thunderbolt by Jupiter, and hurled headlong into the river Po.

Even if 3200 Phaethon is a clump of rock bits, which is one kind of asteroid, the Geminids are many hundreds of years old, so those bits should have long since been lost, and yet they are still throwing stuff off.